The Clouds Roll Away (34 page)

“Ma'am, it's nothing—”

“Raleigh, he's the victim of hate crimes. But you're assuming he's a criminal because he's black and works in rap music.”

“No, I—”

“Three different magazines called me this week. Do you have any idea what this man has done with his life? He adopts orphans from Liberia. Kids whose parents get killed fighting over those blood diamonds. And do you know what every single one of those reporters wanted to know?”

I waited. I was thinking of the blood diamonds. The black market in white stones that grow in abundance in West Africa.

“Every one of those reporters wanted to know why the FBI can't find the bigots who are trying to kill this man. And I couldn't tell them. How do you think that makes the Bureau look, Raleigh?”

“Ma'am, the men who allegedly broke into his house were black. One of them has been identified. He was a member of the gang on Southside, and my instinct tells me—”

“Your instinct?” she said. “You mean your gut. The same gut feeling that wound up ruining the task force. And here you have the gall to ask that we place this man on the no-fly list, based on this same gut of yours.”

I took a deep, deep breath, staring at the truck in front of me. There was an 800 number on the mud flaps, followed by the question, “How's my driving?” Right above that, on the back door, was an ichthus. The fish symbol. There were people who considered faith sentimental, a harmless exercise for the simpleminded. As if Christianity meant cherubs playing harps and angels in the clouds. But the truth was gritty. The truth hurt. It stung. And obedience to it sometimes showed the hallmarks of torture—you could cry out in pain, but there was no guarantee that would stop the agony.

“Ma'am, with all due respect, this is more than a gut feeling. If you'll let me explain.”

“All right. Is the investigative file opened? I presume you have all the necessary documentation—the subpoenas? I'll send them to HQ for approval and we'll place this man on the no-fly list.”

I counted to five. I had nothing, and she knew it.

She was puffing again. “Why are you calling me, Raleigh?”

“Because his statements and actions don't line up with the facts. And if he leaves the United States for Africa, extradition will be almost impossible. Could we at least assign twenty-four-hour surveillance?”

“On Christmas Eve? Sure, why not. I'll call SOG, tell them to throw something together.”

SOG, the Special Operations Group.

“We are under the microscope with every single civil rights case. And this man, who is a victim, has a direct line to the national media.” She puffed, puffed. “But if you're sure, I'll take this straight up the chain of command.”

The chain of command. The chain that linked Phaup to headquarters and the oversight committees. I stared at the mud flaps. Nothing sentimental about it. Just the opposite. My chain of command told me to respect authority, even when that authority painted a giant bull's-eye on my forehead and locked me in its crosshairs. I had to obey. And right now, that felt like toothpicks were being shoved under my fingernails. And I knew that pain was nothing compared to what was endured for me by one who remained sinless.

“I apologize for bothering you, ma'am,” I said. “It sounds like I caught you at a bad time.”

“Raleigh, it's Christmas Eve. I'm in the middle of the Arizona desert. And because of you, I've lost my group. Is there something else, or can we hang up now?”

Like most of the city, Richmond's airport was connected to the War of Northern Aggression. As part of the flat area east of town, the land was originally used by Confederates floating tethered reconnaissance balloons to spy on the enemy in Petersburg. Later it became an airport named Byrd Field, after the Virginia aviator and explorer Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd. But more recently civic leaders suffering from a case of prosaic mercantilism changed the name to Richmond International Airport.

Folks still called it Byrd Field.

On Christmas Eve, stranded passengers filled the terminal. They flopped in the plastic chairs and slept on the carpet, and their faces carried that peculiar shade of pale that was produced by travel combined with deprivation. I took the main escalator to the atrium mezzanine and saw more weary travelers waiting out the storm, including one little girl who was twirling her wrinkled Christmas dress and imploring her bleary-eyed mother to watch, watch, watch.

The FBI's airport liaison waited at the security checkpoint.

Known as Sonny, Special Agent Carson McCauley guided me around the X-ray machines monitored by bored-looking TSA agents. He was a fast walker, so fast that strands of his hair lifted as he walked, like masts in search of sails. His white dress shirt was wrinkled; his tie swung from a loosened knot.

“Tough day?” I asked.

His short, thick legs chafed against his slacks, raising the cuffs.

“We started diverting flights yesterday when this storm came in,” he said. “We had emergency staff on the ground, and everything was going pretty well until I got radioed about a flight from Miami. Three Arab guys on board, sitting in back. They were taking fifteen-minute turns in the can, with their cell phones. The stewardesses are freaking out because these guys keep talking about Allah, and I'm heading down to the gate when an elderly passenger comes off a flight from Atlanta and drops dead of a heart attack. And next gate over, some woman's screaming she's going to blow up the airport if we don't get her to Pittsburgh for Christmas. While I'm putting out those fires, these Arab guys slip out on the last flight leaving for LaGuardia.”

He stopped at a metal door, keyed the code into the touch-pad, and held the door for me. The phone was ringing on his desk. He ran over and picked it up.

Turning to the window to give him privacy, I watched the plows on the tarmac, churning through the whiteout, the yellow lights blinking on their cabs.

“Not Kennedy, LaGuardia,” Sonny was saying.

The visitor's chair was under a bulletin board glaciated with white paper. New regulations, laws, official standards, all of it sending shivers of despair down my spine. Crimes committed on aircrafts were no different than those on the ground—theft, robbery, sexual assault, extortion, concealed weapons, murder. But when the plane door closed, every one of those crimes turned federal. And they fell on guys like Sonny, our agents monitoring the unfriendly skies.

“Three of them, yeah,” Sonny was saying. “Lemme look . . . aisle 25.”

I've heard people wonder aloud how nineteen foreigners managed to hijack airplanes and tear a hole through America. I've heard all the conspiracy theories. But the truth began with a July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix. He noticed an alarming pattern of Arab men taking aviation training classes, and by August the Bureau had counted six hundred Middle Eastern men taking aviation lessons. Most of them turned out to be commercial and military pilots, sent by their governments for official training. But the FBI still had to run background checks on all six hundred, conduct at least twice that many interviews, and scale the college wall—a good portion of these six hundred subjects attended universities where professors and fellow students were openly hostile to law enforcement. To complicate matters further, there was the politically sensitive issue of racial profiling. They were all Middle Eastern men, but we weren't supposed to say that.

All this was known by August 2001.

September came next.

Boom
.

Boom
.

Boom
.

It's always easy to connect the dots later, that 20/20 of hindsight. And maybe things should have moved more quickly. But Western justice is a very slow grind. Unlike our enemies, we can't just behead suspects.

Now, on Christmas Eve, I was looking at a guy sweating bullets over three Arab men. We needed to be right every single time; the terrorists only needed one decent shot.

“Call me soon as you know anything.” Sonny hung up the phone, drawing a hand over his hair. “Now, Raleigh, what do you need?”

“Quick check on a private plane registered out here. The owner is a guy who goes by the name RPM.”

“Him?” Sonny said.

“You know about him.”

“I've wanted to slap a search on that plane for years,” he said. “What do you got?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Can I look at his plane?”

chapter forty

I
walked from the terminal to the private hangars beside the tarmac. A spiteful wind blew across my face, and by the time I got to the corrugated metal structure housing RPM's private plane, snow clung to my jeans and I couldn't feel my lips. Moments later a four-wheeled cart, the kind used for towing luggage carts, pulled up. A man jumped out wearing an insulated snowsuit. Tearing off a thick glove, he inserted a key into the hangar's lock. We hurried inside, stomping feet on a rubber mat, as he brushed his hand along the wall, turning on the lights.

It was a cavernous hangar, and he looked like a teenager. Long hair. Gray-blue eyes bright with adrenaline.

Extending my hand, I introduced myself.

“Jimmy Gint,” he said.

“Thanks for coming out in this weather, Jimmy.”

“Hey, no problem.”

I walked toward the plane. It was a sleek white jet parked diagonally across the poured concrete floor. Not much more than six feet in height, the plane's narrow body tapered fifty feet from tip to tail in aerodynamic perfection.

“What is it you do out here, Jimmy?”

He followed me like a puppy.

“I'm a mechanic.” He caught himself, suddenly bashful. “Well, almost a mechanic. Maintenance apprentice. But this summer I get my degree from J. Sergeant Reynolds. I love planes, all planes.”

I smiled. This was good. “What can you tell me about this plane?”

“This one?” He walked toward it like a man approaching an altar. “This is one hot machine. They hate it next door.”

“Who's that?”

“The Billion Air people, private charter guys? This sweet baby makes their planes look dumpy. They're not, but you know rich folks. They gotta have more. Know what I'm saying?”

“I know exactly what you're saying.” I smiled again.

Jimmy Gint was eager, alive, and pumped, the antithesis of studied cool. I watched more adrenaline flash through his eyes. The big storm, right in the thick of it, and he was an expert. I was suddenly very happy to have him here.

“So, Jimmy, what makes this plane so special?”

“This is a Gulfstream V-SP,” he said, taking on the tone of authority. “It can cover seven thousand miles at Mach eight, nonstop.”

“That sounds fast.”

“Six hundred miles an hour? Yeah, that's fast. And it's totally decked out inside. Leather, white carpet, the whole bit.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Don't even get me started,” he said. “The pillows? They're zebra. Fur. From the animal.”

“You really know this plane.”

“I get to look,” he said, boasting. “The pilot likes me.”

“Who's the pilot?”

“He lives in New York. Victor Minsky.”

I stopped walking. I tried to give a nice smile. “Is Mr. Minsky around, by any chance?”

“He flew in right before the storm. But where he goes after he lands, I don't know.”

“So he lives in New York but flies out of Richmond?”

Jimmy nodded. Minsky, he explained with boasting knowledge, flew down in his Cessna, which Jimmy went into some detail about, once again proving his expertise. “He just flew some people to Africa.”

“Really. When was that?”

“Couple days ago. He took a whole bunch of people over.”

“Does he do that often?” I was wondering if he meant the trip Wally went on.

“This time, yeah. Second trip in a week. But this other group didn't come back with him. I think maybe they live there. Anyway, he flew back by himself.”

I smiled again. “You keep your eyes open.”

We were standing near the jet's tires, which looked much too small for a machine that could fly close to the speed of sound. Small bits of stone were embedded in the rubber treads and I took a pen from my pocket, prying one loose. Underneath, sandy red soil was lodged deep inside.

“Whatcha doing?” Jimmy asked.

I turned around. “I've got this bad habit. I like things to look perfect. That rock in that beautiful tire, it bugged me.”

I smiled again.

But Jimmy Gint didn't smile back.

I walked slowly around the plane, admiring it, letting several significant moments pass. “Can you keep a secret?” I asked.

He nodded, wary.

“I mean,
really
keep a secret. Not tell anyone?”

Another nod.

“Some people are trying to make life very difficult for the man who owns this plane. The FBI was called in to find out who's behind it. But this is all top secret. You cannot repeat this to anybody.”